Voyages mécaniques

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Swift's speculative learning machine
is a fictional mechanical device for automatic text generation. The
purpose of the machine it to “write books in philosophy, poetry,
politics, law, mathematics, and theology, etc.” Swift wrote about
it in his Gulliver's Travels.

The
novel came into existence in the general cultural context of suspicion towards the emerging world of machines in the XVIII
century. Swift was no exception. In the end, it is the
very business of the intellectual
to doubt, not to take things on their face value. “Perhaps
you
might wonder to see me
employed in a project for improving speculative knowledge, by
practical and mechanical operations”,
says the inventor of the
machine, professor of the fictional Lagado Academy. Swift
was essentially
doubting about the possibility to acquire knowledge by purely
mechanical means.

Philosophy
– spirit VS flesh

Why?
For philosophers, at least from Plato on, knowledge always
represented the highest and finest achievement of the human spirit.
What is more, the very essence of the human mind was seen to consist
in knowing. The knowledge
itself was conceptualized as theoria
–looking at things
with the mind's eye. Now, the Latin word for Greek theoria
is speculatio. The word “speculative” literally means “to look, to see, to
gaze, to stare”. But in the philosophical jargon it designates the
looking activity divorced from the sensual (perception). So, the
speculation can be described as an intellectual looking
at things. In addition, it is looking at intellectual
things, things that do not exist
in space and time, things
like God, numbers, the idea of justice, etc.

Every
machine is a mechanical device. And every mechanical device is made
of some material. So, the machine is a material device. Simply put,
it means that it exists as a concrete individual thing.It occupies someposition in
space and time. But the essence of spirituality resides in the
intellectuality: intellectual speculation of intellectual things.
Being material,
machine must be opposed to the spirituality. Where there is machine,
there is no spirit, and vice versa.

That
is why the professor, inventor of the machine says to Gulliver:
“Perhaps you
might wonder to see me
employed in a project for improving speculative knowledge, by
practical and mechanical operations.”
Knowledge is something theoretical and not practical. Knowledge is
something spiritual and not mechanical.

Descartes
– mind VS body-machine

But
there is more to it. And in order to understand why we have to go
back to Descartes (XVII century). He
is the one who redefined the old Christian problem of flesh VS spirit
into a more modern one. That of the body VS mind. What is absolutely new
in the historical sense is that he defined the flesh as mechanism.
So, body is a flesh became mechanical. Being mechanical now explains
what it means to be material.

Descartes'
philosophy is known as dualism. That means that there are only
two kinds of things in the universe. And for Descartes everything was
either a mind or a body, but not both. So, the spirit could never be
material and body could never be spiritual. Corollary: there is no such
thing as a spiritual machine.

Cartesian
method

The history is very ironic. And philosophy is no exception to that.
Because the very essence of the Cartesian method – Descartes Latin
name was Cartesius – made possible reflexion on thinking machines.
Descartes was philosophically engaged in finding the perfect
scientific method. The idea was simple. We all have the common sense
that tells us perfectly what is true and what isn't. The only problem
is that we do not use it well.
So, let's find a method that would be trivially easy to apply, so
that even a man with humble intellectual capacities could use it
to find the truths.
All of them. Even the most
profound ones. The point is, with a method, whose workings
consist in application of simple discrete steps one has to be no
genius in order to find out even the most complicated truths.

The
only thing one has to have is a patience and a concentrated mind. That means that
the study is nevertheless required on the part of the prospective
scholar.

Speculative
learning machine

But
wait! If even the man with no genius at all could solve the difficult
intellectual problems by making easy to follow simple
discrete steps why wouldn't it be possible for
the machine too? You just have to construct a machine that can reproduce these Cartesian method-like steps. And that is exactly what Swift's speculative
learning machine does.

It even pushes Descartes' idea one step
further. Because not only one doesn't
have to be a genius in order to write books in philosophy, poetry,
etc. but also the
usage of his machine dispenses one from the “study”. Only thing
required is a little bodily labor to push and pull levers driving the
machine. The machine itself applies the rules of the method and
outputs truths in the form of the string of letters.

There
is a strong analogy here between the tool-machine and mind-machine
relationship. The tool
demands the skill and labor on the part of the artisan. The machine
dispenses the worker from both. Now it is the
machine which
skillfully handles tools. Man does not have to work, except for the
“little bodily effort” needed to operate the machine. In the case
of our speculative learning machine, the machine is doing the
thinking, the truth discovery. It is gathering the knowledge
for us. We do not need to be genius in order to use it. But we don't
need either to indulge ourselves in a tedious and long study. We just
need to put a “little bodily effort” in order to operate the
machine.

Looking
forward to the spiritual machines

The
speculative learning machine was never made. Nevertheless, we made
lot of thinking machines. Thinking in the sense of the
application of simple
discrete rules that are finite in number. Those machines are
computers and their thinking is called “algorithmic problem
solving”. So, at least in this sense some
machines of
our age do speculate.

In the
next article we will go one step further. We will talk not only about
machines that think, but also about machines
that are longing to be spiritual. We will analyze android's quest for
religion
as it is
described by Phillip K. Dick in his novel Do Androids Dream
of Electric Sheep.

Friday, October 18, 2013

In the novel Gulliver's Travels there
is a city called Laputa. It is the hometown of the Lagado Academy.
The king of Laputa has ordered its
establishment because the
city was very poor. He intended the Academy to be a powerful engine
of the economic development. Instead of it, the Academy was a home to
what seemed like the most
strange and useless experiments.

One of those experiments focuses on a
construction of the instrument that the narrator describes somewhat
ironically as a “wonderful
machine”. Although not the
“engine” of the Laputa's economic development, it proves to
bethe
very core of the contemporary productivity's growth. Not only that it
bears similarities with
the modern day computers, but
also with the ways they simulate human intellectual activity.

Swift wrote his novel when the world of machines was emerging. In the third part of this essay we will philosophically analyze his fictional device. But before that, let's
first read this passage,
wondrous in its own right.

Illustration: Grandville

We
crossed a walk to the other part of the academy, where, as I have
already said, the projectors in speculative learning resided.

The
first professor I saw, was in a very large room, with forty pupils
about him. After salutation, observing me to look earnestly upon a
frame, which took up the greatest part of both the length and breadth of
the room, he said, "Perhaps I might wonder to see him employed in a
project for improving speculative knowledge, by practical and mechanical
operations. But the world would soon be sensible of its usefulness; and
he flattered himself, that a more noble, exalted thought never sprang
in any other man's head. Every one knew how laborious the usual method
is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the
most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily
labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws,
mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or
study." He then led me to the frame, about the sides, whereof all his
pupils stood in ranks. It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle
of the room. The superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about
the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked
together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered, on every
square, with paper pasted on them; and on these papers were written all
the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and
declensions; but without any order. The professor then desired me "to
observe; for he was going to set his engine at work." The pupils, at his
command, took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were
forty fixed round the edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn,
the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then
commanded six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly,
as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four
words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the
four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three or
four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the
words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside
down.

Six hours a day the young students were employed
in this labour; and the professor showed me several volumes in large
folio, already collected, of broken sentences, which he intended to
piece together, and out of those rich materials, to give the world a
complete body of all arts and sciences; which, however, might be still
improved, and much expedited, if the public would raise a fund for
making and employing five hundred such frames in Lagado, and oblige the
managers to contribute in common their several collections.

He
assured me "that this invention had employed all his thoughts from his
youth; that he had emptied the whole vocabulary into his frame, and made
the strictest computation of the general proportion there is in books
between the numbers of particles, nouns, and verbs, and other parts of
speech."

I made my humblest acknowledgment to this
illustrious person, for his great communicativeness; and promised, "if
ever I had the good fortune to return to my native country, that I would
do him justice, as the sole inventor of this wonderful machine;" the
form and contrivance of which I desired leave to delineate on paper, as
in the figure here annexed. I told him, "although it were the custom of
our learned in Europe to steal inventions from each other, who had
thereby at least this advantage, that it became a controversy which was
the right owner; yet I would take such caution, that he should have the
honour entire, without a rival."

Employing
mechanical devices for the purpose of learning seems to us like a
trivial fact. We use these devices as
educational means in our
everyday life practically all
the time. But
it was not always
so. There wasa
time when
many of the notable European intellectuals
regarded newly emerging world of machines
with the considerable dose of
suspicion. There were even intellectuals that adopted an openly
hostile attitude towards mechanical devices. Appearing
more visibly in the XVII century, this
attitude reached its peak during the industrial revolution.

The
reason behind this inimical stance was a
belief that the domain
of the mechanical is
something opposed
to the spiritual realm. Therefore, where the mechanical prevails, the
spiritualhas to absent
itself. And
yet,
the spiritual
had higher value for these intellectuals. Not
only because the machine was
of the flash, and the flash
had less worththan
the spirit.
In a turn characteristic of
the philosophy as such, the mechanical came to designate the very
essence of the flesh in the
modern era. This turn was
initiated by René Descartes, famous
french philosopher of the
XVII century.

Jonathan
Swift's speculative learning machine

Jonathan
Swift, author of the novel Gulliver's
Travels,stands
historically somewhere between the Descartes' mechanization of the
world picture and the socially ravaging machines of the industrial
revolution. In his novel, he describes a
fictional knowledge device, the
so
called
speculative learning machine.

The
word “speculative” stands for spiritual. Philosophically,
it
designates something divorced from the world of sensual (perception).
The
machine itself is depicted as a room-sized
wooden frame covered with bits of wood connected by wires. All of the
existing
words
of Laputa language are written on these wooden bits. The functioning
of the machine consists in generating random sequences of text in
accordance with the “proportions between
the numbers of particles, nouns, and verbs, and other parts of
speech”. Here is how Swift
describes the functioning of the machine:

The
professor then desired me "to observe; for he was going to set
his engine at work." The pupils, at his command, took each of
them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the
edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole
disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded
six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they
appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words
together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the
four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three
or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that
the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved
upside down.

Interestingly
enough, the fictional device described by Swift strangely resembles
the first electronic general-purpose computer, ENIAC. Take
your time and read the whole
relevant passagefrom
the novel. It
is worth it. Than go on and join our philosophical effort
to analyze
this “wonderful machine” in the third part of this essay.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

We are all familiar with that warm cosy feel we have when we
get home from work. It is not only release from the job fatigue that makes
us feel so good. It is something else, something more valuable than the
well deserved rest.

Être chez soi

It's not a sheer coincidence that French people say être chez soi in order to express the idea of being at home. Being at home for them literally means being at oneself (which is, of course, grammatically incorrect English). Taken literally, this expression is a spatial metaphor indicating a paradoxical situation where something contains itself. This something has returned to itself and now stays in itself. Simply put, it is back where it belongs - at its home.

Being at oneself
is not the same as being on one's own. Being on one's own means that we
are left alone. It means that we miss something or more precisely,
someone. It means that we are cut off from the community and our
fellows.

On the contrary, being at oneself
has to do with the authentic community. You have to be an independent person in order to be able to have a true relationship. And being at oneself captures the very essence of that personal autonomy. When you are autonomous, you hold on to yourself. You stand up for yourself. It is you who determine your own actions and not something else outside you or someone else different from you. Simply put, you are in yourself.

So, do you feel at home using your Windows / OS X?

So,
do you feel at home using your Windows / OS X? What a question!
Since when is the operating system a home-like structure? As far as a
normal user is concerned, since forever. Windows and OS X have a user
folder and a desktop. And that is your home, the virtual one though. How
come? Your user folder and your desktop environment is a space of a
certain kind. You can navigate through that space, just like you can
walk through your home. This space is delimited by other users'
accounts, just like the walls of your apartment delimit your living
space from neighboring flats. Ideally, others can enter in your user
space only on your own accord. But a cracker (falsely identified as hacker) can also break into your
account, just like a burglar can break into your house.

So,
do you feel at home using your Windows / OS X? Do you have that warm
cosy feel conveyed by the words "feels like home"? The apparent answer
could be, yes. Because Microsoft and Apple would do everything in order for you not be on your own. They will offer you a customer support,
social networks and similar useful services. They will try to take you by
the hand and guide you all the way through your virtual life. For them, it is
imperative that you do not feel on your own!

But why? The obvious answer is that they are competing hard against each other in order to win the customers.

A
less obvious answer would be the following: they are trying to prevent you from
being on your own because they don't want you to think for yourself.
They are constantly lending you a hand because they want your permanent
infancy. And infancy means lack of integrity and lack of control over
one's own life. So, it is your free thinking that is at stake and not
their free competition!

In the world of Microsoft and Apple, you are no more than a
customer. And the customer is not a friend. Customer is, well, customer.
Even when they call him a user. Even then, he must pay for the services. And
when he does not have any money left, it's over.

Back to the French expression. Être chez soi. Being at oneself. To contain oneself. To be in oneself. This little phrase captures the essence of what it means to be at home. That said, "living" inside Windows / OS X gives us the exact opposite. Using this operative systems, you are out of yourself. You feel like stranger at your own home. And the home itself feels like it belongs to somebody else. Even though it was you who bought it. You simply know that you can't control the thing.

Symptom "user"

Maybe it is not a sheer coincidence that a folder where your files live is called user folder
in Windows and OS X. They can't simply call it what it is - customer
folder. It's too rude in our contemporary world. But they can't either
call it what it is not - home folder. As Freud taught us, anytime a
psyche is caught in the conflict between reality and desire, it must
construct a symptom - an intermediate solution of the conflict at hand.
The term user is the perfect compromise between being at home (desire) and being a customer (reality).

Try GNU/Linux

Maybe It is not a sheer coincidence that a folder where your files live is called home folder
under GNU/Linux system. GNU/Linux is the free operating system
developed by the community of fellow programmers. The leading idea is to
be in control of the software, to empower users. We will surely talk more
about GNU/Linux in future posts. In the meantime, try it. Maybe you'll
finally have that cosy warm feeling that you've been longing for.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Another World is a science fiction themed game happening in a
strange and beautiful alien world. After a risky nuclear physics experiment, the hero, Lester Knight Chaykin, suddenly finds himself lost somewhere in this world. His obvious goal is to find his way out and get back to his home world. (Nevertheless, this obvious goal would not be the final one. To know more about the game itself read this review.) In this short article, we will draw the parallel between two sublime scenes found in this video game and a general settings of Asimov's Robot series. For those of you who don't know Asimov's Robots, it is a series of short stories and novels about robots set in the Earth's near future. The space expansion era has just begun and robots are looking more and more like humans.

Panorama of the alien city

The first scene can be found here. It presents us with a look through the prison window as the breathtaking panorama of the alien city slowly appears. At this moment, the subtle dialectic (technical term for the unity of opposites) of open and closed space is about to happen. We are looking at the alien world through the eyes of the hero trapped in the alien tower. Thus, his physical viewpoint alone conveys the feel of the closed space. On the other hand, we see the infinitely looking immensity
of the alien city outside. The contrast between the closed finite state and open immense space is clearly depicted.

Our hero is put right in the middle of this ontological "drama". Being caught in a prison of the alien tower, he is
closed in the tower's interior. And yet, he wants to escape it trying to
find his way out. This "out" signifies not only the city outside the tower, but also and primarily the great beyond, the "outer" space that lies over and above the bounds of the alien city (see the game ending).

Infinite descending of the urban abyss

The second scene that we're going to analyse can be seen here.
Our hero is shown from the top down perspective falling down. The abyss he is falling into is not a natural
one. It is embedded in the heart of the alien city. In so far as it is
an urban structure, it represents closed space. Namely, city space
in general results from the spatial disposition of barriers
such as streets, walls, roofs etc. These barriers are closures of the natural landscapeopenness. And yet, this abyss seems to be going down endlessly. It is this very opposition between the urban closed space of the abyss and its infinite descending that is so intriguing in this scene.

While in the first scene the open space of the alien city contains the closed space of the alien tower, here it is exactly the other way round. The infinity/openness of the abyss is literally embedded in the finitude and closeness of the alien cityscape. In short, the finite contains infinite.

Dialectic of openness and closure in the Asimov's Robot series

This
short analysis shows us the possible ways of the the
diegetic space (the imaginary space inside the game world) stratagems in the narrative aspect of the video game. Its dialectic of openness and closure is akin to
the dynamic presented in the Isaac Asimov's novels The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun.
In the first novel, the closure of the urban space is emphasised by the
steel cupola build above the city. The city is literally isolated from
the outside world by its vaulted ceiling. Its light and whether
conditions are generated artificially. Thus, the connection between artificial and closed is hinted by the novel (we will not explore it in this article). While the steel barrier is protecting the city from the open nature, the naked sun signifies the open space unprotected by the urban structures.

The
nakedness of the sun can hurt your eyes. At the same time, it is
very tempting to look directly in the sun without wearing the eye
protection. To put it simply, we are simultaneously frightened and attracted by the open space. We feel safe and protected in our pocket universe. But then again, we are always tempted to leave it, fascinated with the infinite reaches of the open space.

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About Me

Hello, I am a philosopher of Yugoslavian origin. In my
research I'm trying to untie the borromean knot of ontology, science and
politics. I am also an amateur hacker and a video game/science fiction
aficionado.

I currently live and work in Lausanne, Switzerland, where I write my PhD
thesis L'idée de machine et d'automate dans la philosophie de René
Descartes.